Day Three - Poetic Justice
PETE & DAIS
Analysis - Brian Bilston
“Brian Bilston is a laureate for our fractured times, a wordsmith who cares deeply about the impact his language makes as it dances before our eyes.”
DAIS
Poetry was something which I loved to study when forced. I used to get a thrill out of those Shakespearean lessons with Doc P. Hours spent interpreting different lines and piecing together a puzzle of moving pieces.
Since school, I have struggled with poetry’s inaccessibility. I don’t have hours to study a single poem anymore. And quite frankly, I would much prefer to sit down and have an ice-cold cider, some Tyrells crinkled furrows (sea salt and cider vinegar, if you’re asking) and a heart-warming chat with my boyfriend about the people we love most.
My opinion on poetry changed somewhat, I’d say, about two and a half years ago. And it changed when I started following Brian Bilston on social media, the acclaimed “Poet Laureate of Twitter”. Brian Bilston’s poems are genius; short, sharp and full of spirit. His words seem to do a lovely thing, of being incredibly mild and unobtrusive, whilst also dancing, screaming, whispering, and hiding, all at the same time.
His poems about our current times are different to his usual rhetoric, yet carry a sense of strength and truth that is captivating. If you, like me, have struggled with poetry’s inaccessibility in the past, I could not recommend Brian’s work more. He subtly ignites the passionate flame of verse and has made it a creative whirlpool of interest once again.
Here are some of my favourite poems from him of late, with a political twist. Enjoy.
Source - https://twitter.com/brian_bilston
Source - https://twitter.com/brian_bilston
Source - https://twitter.com/brian_bilston
Source - https://twitter.com/brian_bilston
Source - https://twitter.com/brian_bilston
Source - https://twitter.com/brian_bilston
Opinion: Apathy is the enemy
PETE
I remember the 2000s. Not a remarkable feat in and of itself. More particularly I remember being a teenager who cared about politics in the 2000s. That I think was a remarkable feat. To my recollection there were about five to ten of us in the UK. I remember listening to the introduction of tuition fees on Today in Westminster on Radio 4 and feeling pissed off that I would have the debt and my older brother wouldn’t. But I remember thinking that it simply wasn’t the most important item on the political agenda and, anyway, is there not something unreasonable about asking the general taxpayer to pay for others to have an education that the majority do not. Especially when that education would likely lead to higher future earnings and greater opportunity. Anyway, I digress. In summary no one young apart from a few annoying Liberal Democrats cared about politics.
As the poems show and our experiences inform, politics is a mass sport once more. The 2010s seem to have come alive with popular movements and strong opinions. Things started strongly in 2010 with the first coalition government since 1945. I recall sitting in France in 2011 listening to the World Service interviewing rioting and not rioting youths in London. A couple of years later the Scottish referendum seemed to stir something within almost everyone I knew. Young people, of which I was just about one in 2014, were starting to care as debates at the time about lowering the age of voting demonstrated. Mobilising the young became something that campaigns really cared about. Twitter was a thing. Facebook was a thing. Other young people things were a thing. Two years later and Momentum existed. So did gangly young Tories talking about how the European Union had wrecked their childhood. More recently, the climate catastrophe has become mainstream election-influencing policy.
Most of the changes of the last ten years have gone against my preferences and it is little compensation that at least I can finally talk to my friends about politics. Anyway, we’ve grown old enough to talk about politics even when it is boring. But I think there is something important lurking in these experiences. I wonder if we would be staring down the barrel of the least capable and least honest politicians for a century if we had taken it all a little more seriously. As it is, we are having to learn on the hoof how to have serious debates, judge arguments, assess provenance and how to make hard choices. Generations of ambitious and capable leaders have rinsed it in The City rather than in public service. Surely, if the quality the personnel was higher and the level of scrutiny at least passable then the real and difficult policy decisions would have been handled so much differently for the last ten years.
So, who to blame? Personally, I blame my parents. Sure, they did actually make me care about politics and educate me about the debates. But I was too young to do anything so it’s still their fault and, anyway, I now tweet.
